I couldn’t let him unsettle me, but he was doing well. The smile had chilled me. It made the currentshadows race around my arms and throat, my forever adornments. Always denser, faster, when my brother cued them with his voice.
“Yes, I will execute this traitor myself,” he said. “Clear a path.”
I knew his smile, and what it disguised. He had a plan. But hopefully mine was better.
Ryzek descended to the arena floor slowly and with grace, walking the path the crowd made for him, pausing at the barrier so a servant could check the tension of his armor straps and the sharpness of his currentblades.
In an honest fight, I would beat Ryzek within minutes. My father had taught Ryzek the art of cruelty, and my mother had taught him political scheming, but everyone had always left me alone to my own studies. My isolation had made me his superior in combat. Ryzek knew that, so he would never make this an honest fight. That meant I didn’t know what weapon he was really holding.
He was taking his time on his way to the arena, which meant there was likely something he was waiting for. He didn’t intend to actually fight me, obviously, just as I didn’t intend to fight him.
If all was going according to plan, and Yma had slipped the contents of the vial into the calming tonic he drank with his breakfast, the iceflowers were already swimming through his body. The timing would not be exact; that depended on the person. I would have to be ready for the potion to surprise me, or fail entirely.
“You’re dawdling,” I said, hoping that calling him out would speed him up. “What is it you’re waiting for?”
“I am waiting for the right blade,” Ryzek said, and he dropped down to the arena floor. Dust rose up in a cloud around his feet. He rolled up his left sleeve, baring his kill marks. He had run out of space on his arm, and started a second row next to the first, near his elbow. He claimed every kill that he ordered as his own, even if he himself had not brought about the death.
Ryzek drew his currentblade slowly, and as he raised his arm, the crowd around us exploded into cheers. Their roar clouded my thoughts. I couldn’t breathe.
He didn’t look pale and unfocused, like he had actually consumed the poison. He looked, if anything, more focused than ever.
I wanted to run at him with blade extended, like an arrow released from a bow, a transport vessel breaking through the atmosphere. But I didn’t. And neither did he. We both stood in the arena, waiting.
“What are you waiting for, sister?” Ryzek said. “Have you lost your nerve?”
“No,” I said. “I’m waiting for the poison you swallowed this morning to settle in.”
A gasp rattled through the crowd, and for once—for the first time—Ryzek’s face went slack with shock. I had finally truly surprised him.
“All my life you’ve told me I have nothing to offer but the power that lives in my body,” I said. “But I am not an instrument of torture and execution; I am the only person who knows the real Ryzek Noavek.” I stepped toward him. “I know how you fear pain more than anything else in this world. I know that you gathered these people here today, not to celebrate a successful scavenge, but to witness the murder of Orieve Benesit.”
I sheathed my blade. I held my hands out to my sides so the crowd could see that they were empty. “And the most important thing I know, Ryzek, is that you can’t bear to kill someone unless you drug yourself first. Which is why I poisoned your calming tonic this morning.”
Ryzek touched his stomach, as if he could feel the hushflower eating away at his guts through his armor.
“You made a mistake, valuing me only for my currentgift and my skill with a knife,” I said.
And for once, I believed it.
CHAPTER 36: AKOS
The air in the underground prison was cool, but Akos knew that wasn’t why Isae was trembling as she said, “Your mother said Ori would be here.”
“There has to be a mistake,” Cisi said softly. “Something she didn’t see—”
Akos was pretty sure there was no mistake, but he wasn’t about to share that now. They had to find Ori. If she wasn’t in the prison, she had to be closer to the amphitheater—maybe above them, in the arena, or on the platform where Ryzek had cut into his own sister.
“We’re wasting time. We need to go upstairs and find her,” he said, surprised by how forceful his own voice sounded. “Now.”
Apparently his voice had broken through Isae’s panic. She took a deep breath and turned toward the door, where the distant footsteps of a few ticks ago had resolved into the menacing form of Vas Kuzar.
“Surukta. Kereseth. Ah—Benesit,” Vas said, looking at Isae with a little tilt to his mouth. “Not as pretty as your twin, I have to say. Is that scar from a Shotet blade, by any chance?”
“Benesit?” Teka said, staring at Isae. “As in . . .”
Isae nodded.
Cisi had backed up against the wall of one of the cells, her hands flat against the glass. Akos wondered if his sister felt like she was standing in their living room again, watching Vas Kuzar murder their dad. That was how he had felt the first few times he saw Vas after the kidnapping—like everything was unraveling inside him at once. He didn’t feel that way anymore.
Vas was empty-eyed as always. It had been disappointing to figure out that Vas was so empty of wrath, numb inside as well as outside. It was easier to think of him as pure evil, but the truth was, he was just a pet doing his master’s bidding.